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Thursday, June 20, 2013

Let Grammy Patty get her ear horn out...

Oh, yeah, my name is Patty. Nobody calls me Pahz in a real-world situation. I use "Pahz" because I do photography ("No way!" you say. "I KNOW!" I exclaim back) and there are a *kajillion "Patty Smith Photography" places out there. "Pahz" is the phonetic pronounciation of my initals, and I used to sign my artwork with my initials, back in the day when I did artwork.*kajillion is an estimate
I had my doctor appointment today. A few good things- despite having flareups, we're not touching the fibro treatment for now because on the whole (*snicker*) it is working. And I'm not losing weight, but my jeans are becoming ridiculously loose on me. The doc says I'm probably gaining muscle. When I had my knee replacement, as you all know, the recovery was delayed by the then-undiagnosed fibro and I lost a lot of muscle tone in my legs- mostly my thigh muscles (all of them, choose one). All my blood work is good. My bad cholesterol had been about five points into the "time to treat with a drug" area, but the doctor gave me six months to get it down on my own. Guess what? Cheerios. Those dry, disgusting, dusty little circles actually DO help. (I don't like Cheerios. I'm more of a Cocoa Puffs gal).

Now, about my hearing. Well, I'm going deaf. And that sucks, because I was born halfway there. The doctor checked out both my ears and they were not only the cleanest she'd seen (I'm crazy-careful about that), there was also no fluid or any signs of infection. Then she did some weird stuff to me with a tuning fork, which was kind of cool because she did it to my deaf ear too. And of course, there was nothing going on on that side of my head. While she was inspecting my ears with the ear-light-scope thing, I asked how everything looked and she said: "Fine. There's nothing going on inside here..." So, basically, my doctor said there's nothing going on inside my head. LAUGH, GODDAMMIT! I did!

So, she's put in the referral to the Audiology clinic at the VA hospital. One of two things will happen now. I'll get a letter in the mail telling me that they won't do that for me at the VA hospital. There is a list of services that the VA hospital won't cover and it changes every so often. If that happens, the letter explaining it will include the official referral letter for me to take to a non-VA audiologist. That means my insurance will cover it, but we'll have to pay for the first $100 (deductible) and 20% of every cost after that (cost share of patient)... which sucks, because we live on a fixed income and my photography doesn't pay regularly enough for us to count on it.

The other thing that could happen will be that in three months, I'll get a call saying there's an opening on X-day at Y-time and could I get there for that? Of course, I'll go, but I really think it'll be the first scenario.

I told the doctor: "Well, if that happens, then I won't be getting seen by an audiologist." of the second and much shorter scenario.

She sort of made a scoff noise and said: "But you have to. You have to, this is really important. You have to find a way to make it happen if you have to do it that way."

So, soon I'm going to call my dad and say: "Hey, Dad, can you come with me to a doctor appointment [one town over]? Oh, and bring your checkbook..."

I'm kidding... I'm going to call him tomorrow and let him know how my appointment went today. Why tomorrow? Because I'm listening to music right now. I'm listening to it while I can. Reality can bite me for at least one more day.